


On when and why the heart goes cold

by Morganevenstar



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drugs, Multi, Teen Angst, Teen Sherlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-18 00:23:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9354008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morganevenstar/pseuds/Morganevenstar
Summary: Sherlock Holmes is not an emotional man. He cannot afford himself to be. But maybe, there was a time before that. A time when he wanted to be normal. When he wanted to make friends. And maybe he even did. Now, he is friends with John Watson, who is about to get married. "The end of an era." But why does it scare Sherlock so much that he might lose him? After all, he has no friends, no emotions, no heart. Or does he? When and why did it go cold?(About sherlock's time in high school)





	

**Author's Note:**

> I had this idea after rewatching The Sign of Three, but the new episode has thrown my idea and timeline off completely so idk if I'm gonna go through with my original idea, but I hope you enjoy this bit anyway. Please let me know what you think in the comments!

**Present**

Sherlock Holmes did not think himself to be a sentimental man. He thought himself to be incapable of the kind of emotions that are required to form human relations. This shows that, for someone who could presume to know people by their socks, he did not know an awful lot about himself. Maybe it was because he, even after all these years, still strived to be like his brother.Or maybe, he’d been told so many times he had no heart, that he’d simply stopped feeling it beating and had started taking it as a truth; “Sherlock Holmes had no heart.” “sherlock holmes did not have feelings.”Sherlock Holmes did not have friends. Right now, he saw all these truths crumbling before his eyes, as he felt his heart break with terribly feelable feelings for his best friend, John Watson. Not just friend: Best friend. It was a title hed recently gained for the first time in his life and now he felt he was about to lose it again, because he was about to lose John. He was about to lose him to the most stupid thing he could think of. Marriage. Sherlock liked Mary, that was not even the problem. The problem might rather be he liked her too much. Deep down, Sherlock feared that John was only his friend because he’d been lonely. Mary could take care of that now. What would he need Sherlock for? He looked around the room, full of people that were dressed at their very best, and felt nothing. He detected fourcheaters, six divorcees, two whith an eating disorder, one with an- an alpaca? Two, no five bloody alpaca’s. Okay. Seven more with cats and one guy who was almost definitely wearing his wife’s lingerie, and Sherlock felt absolutely nothing for any of them. If the room had been filled with alpaca’s, he would have just as much of a connection to the crowd as he did now. Except for John. In reverse, though, he was pretty sure half the people in this room either disliked him, feared him, or were in evenly measure amused and irritated by him. None of them felt any affection for him. Except John. And, all right, probably Mary, too. It scared him, how even the thought of them could stir so many things up in his mind, in his heart. Such happy things. Happy was a feeling Sherlock reserved for work, not people. He tugged on his collar, which suddenly felt way too tight. “You all right?” An enormous, bright yellow bow appeared beside him, attached to Molly Hooper’s head.   
“Yeah, sure, I’m fine.”  
“You don’t look fine. But, I suppose, that only makes sense, on a day like this.”  
He frowned at her. “What do you mean?”  
“Well, you know, seeing John get married... having to mingle... giving a speech.. It’s all not very much your cup of tea, is it?”  
“I suppose not.”  
“You sure you’re okay?”  
He wasn’t. He needed a splash of ice water in the face. Suddenly he knew exactly what to do. “Please excuse me.” He walked away to the back of the room and dialed the number.

“Mycroft.”  
“Yes, what, Sherlock? What do you want?”  
“I need your answer, Mycroft, as a matter of urgency.”  
““Answer”?”  
“Even at the eleventh hour it’s not too late, you know.”  
“Today. It’s today, isn’t it? No, Sherlock, I will not be coming to the “night do,” as you so poetically put it. So, this is it, then. The big day. I suppose I’ll be seeing a lot more of you from now on.”  
“What do you mean?” Why did people keep saying things like that all day? As if it wasn’t hard enough already to maintain his carefully constructed willful ignorance about this course of events that he could not stop. He could only bear it.   
“Well, it’s the end of an era, isn’t it? John and Mary – domestic bliss. This is what people do, Sherlock – they get married. I warned you: don’t get involved.”  
“Involved? I’m not involved.”   
“I believe you! Really, I do! Have a lovely day, and do give the happy couple my best. - Oh, by the way, Sherlock – do you remember Redbeard?”   
The name sent a shock through his body. Redbeard. Of course he remembered that. It was a scar that never completely healed. None of his scars ever seemed to heal, but this had been the first. The reason Sherlock Holmes had no heart, no feelings, no friends.   
“I’m not a child any more, Mycroft” Except he did have a heart. He did have a friend. .  
“No, of course you’re not. Enjoy not getting involved, Sherlock.” His brother sounded almost as amused as he sounded ominous. Prick. Sherlock hung up and looked over towards the newlywed couple. His heart felt less like it was breaking now, and more like it was crumbling, slowly trickling away like dust through an hourglass. He hadn’t lied to Mycroft. He wasn’t getting involved. He’d already gotten as deeply involved as he cloud possibly get. He’d stumbled into the pit of involvement head-first and all he could do now was sit and wait until time would run out. He could only sit in the dark and wait for everything to crash and burn, because that’s what always happens. He could hear Mycroft whisper it in his ear. “That’s what happens, little brother. That’s what happens when you get involved...”

 

**1994, Sherlock: 14 years old**

Sherlock Holmes wasn’t very good at making friends. Granted, having been kicked out of three schools and simply moved away from five more in the past three years hadn’t given him much opportunity to make deep human connections. Still, he knew he shared his sibling’s talent for “rubbing people up the wrong way”. Standing in front of the door to his new classroom, he nervously tugged on the hem of his blazer. Behind that door would be a peloton of morons, all ready and set to judge him by their meek and unobserving first impressions. No. Behind that door would be just a classroom of kids, just like he was, a classroom full of potential friends, he told himself. His family’s advice tumbled through his head. Just be yourself and they’ll have to love you, he heard his mom say cheerfully as she smoothed his curls over with hair gel as he squirmed to get away. Right. A kind word is the best defense, his father had chimed in. Oh, sod off. Why should Sherlock care about any of them? He’d be a seal in a sea of plankton in that school. I don’t get why you even still try to have him mingle. That had been Mycroft, of course. Seals aren’t even that bright, Sherlock had remarked. Quite right, his brother replied, not bothering to get his face out of the newspaper. Sherlock was pretty sure by now that both of the polar opposite advices led to disaster, but he’d have to step into that classroom either way. He tousled his gelled-back hair so that it fell into his eyes at the front, drew a deep breath, and knocked on the door. 

The morning had went like every other first-day-of-school morning he’d ever had. Except for the one where he’d accidentally exposed his teacher’s wife’s affair and somehow managed to insult the most criminal kid in class in the process. That morning had definitely been worse. Luckily, today’s teacher had placed him next to the window, which didn’t exactly provide him with any distractions - the window looked onto a plain, unassuming playground wherein the occasional bird was the only thing that moved for most of the day - but at least it gave him an excuse to seem distracted as he retreated inside his mind. Everything had gone as he’d anticipated. There had been the familiar silence after his opening the door, followed by an excited jittering, that inevitably held a hostile undertone. There was the usual snickering as he stated his name. There was the slow losing of interest as he proceeded to state his hobbies. (He’d left out the solving of crimes. He’d figured out that one wasn’t very much a crowd-pleaser.) Same old introductions, same old reactions. Nothing new under the sun. He’d only had to run his eyes over the classroom once to label every single one of the students and classify them into groups, using patterns that he’d picked up at his former schools. Every single one of the students before him could be placed in a group. All of them groups that Sherlock did not belong in, nor wanted to have anything to do with him. This, too, was a pattern he’d come to notice in the past. He felt the slightest pang at this deduction, albeit one he had already anticipated. Despite himself, despite Mycroft, he’d hoped to find a friend here. He hoped that every time. He flashed a smile that probably looked as fake as it felt. Some of the girls smiled back. He accidentally caught the eye of one of them, a blonde who had clearly made some deductions of her own based on his height, eye-color and tousled dark curls. Sherlock’s smile faded immediately and he averted his gaze. Even that was a mistake girls in his previous classes had made. He was seated next to a boy of about his same age. He introduced himself as David. Or maybe it was Gideon. Or Simon? Something biblical. He had dark, soulful eyes, that regarded Sherlock with interest. The boy was tan, probably lived on a farm, but with only chicken as livestock. And a cat, but that probably didn’t count. He wore his uniform with the sleeves all the way down, buttoned at the cuffs. There was something that could be deduced from that, Sherlock was certain as he felt it scratching at the back of his mind, but there were too many new people and impressions in the classroom to focus. His mind raced from one feature of interest to another, dismissing half of them again as uninteresting, lingering on a few, but there were so many at once that most of the things he noticed conjured up more questions than answers. As always happened when Sherlock was in a room with too many people, his head started spinning as he tried to take in all their stories at once, so instead he just briefly nodded to the guy next to him before turning his gaze to the yard outside. At least the patterns there stayed still and didn’t talk to him. He zoned out, retreating into his mind palace. The teacher was droning on about french conjugations. Sherlock hadn’t even bothered to open up his books. In his mind palace were far, far more interesting things to be found. Such as the history of the entire french revolution, wherein Sherlock imagined himself to be one of the men on the barricade, waving a pistol around with one hand and holding a bloodied flag in the other, fighting for his freedom. Of course, to the outside world, it merely looked like the boy had been turned to stone. Just as the second wave of gendarmeries was about to attack, Sherlock was pulled back into reality by David-or-Gideon-or-Simon punching him in the arm. He blinked.   
“I think he’s back.”   
He was looking into the green, green eyes of the girl who sat in front of him. She was turned backwards in her chair, ducked low and whispering as not to attract the attention of the teacher. She studied him with interest.   
“Hello? Sherlock, innit?” She turned her gaze to Gideon. (Sherlock decided he was gonna go with that one. It seemed to suit his face, somehow.) “Told ya there was nothing wrong with him. Poor lad was just daydreamin’.”   
She had the kind of drawling country-side accent that would sent Mycroft into a fit. Sherlock, however, found it rather endearing on this girl.   
Gideon did not look convinced. “You were out man.”  
“Mister Holmes,” the teacher interrupted his monotone teachings in a much louder tone. “I don’t suppose you can explain to us the phrase that is on the board.”  
The three of them - Sherlock, Gideon and the girl- all looked up with a start. Sherlock scraped his throat and scanned the chalkboard in front of the classroom.   
“Liberté, égalité, fraternité,” it said.   
He sighed. Such a boring question. He knew the teacher had meant it as a rhetorical question, but Sherlock gave the answer anyway.   
“The literal translation of this means freedom, equality, brotherhood or death. The meaning is that all men have rights, known as the rights of man. There is no king of men, you as a person have the right to your own body, life and destiny. You will never kneel to a Monarch. You can never be a slave again. Although it finds its origins in the French Revolution, it was then only one motto among others and was not institutionalized until the Third Republic at the end of the 19th century. The first to have made this motto was Maximilien Robespierre in his speech "On the organization of the National Guard" on 5 December 1790, article XVI, and disseminated widely throughout-”  
Here he was stopped short in his speech by the teacher, who silenced him with a motion of his hand, his face almost comically perplexed. Sherlock sunk a little deeper into his chair, trying to appear unfazed as he felt the gaze of twenty-something students bearing into him. He was just about to remark that this was something anyone could find in their textbooks, had they bothered to read them, when he realised he had given his entire answer in french. It was silent for a few moments. Then a wave of whispers erupted. Gideon whistled softly. He exchanged a look with the green-eyed girl.   
“And here we were thinking you were daft or something,” he said, a smile tugging at his mouth. Sherlock ignored him. He ignored everyone. Once the class was silent again, the teacher addressed them calmly, having tucked away his initial surprise. “Come, come, everyone. It seems like our new classmate is a bit more advanced in french then the rest of us. Have you perhaps lived in france, mister Holmes?”  
“No.” Sherlock answered. He opened his mouth to say more, but thought better of it. Don’t be a showoff, he told himself. Nobody likes a showoff.   
“I like this guy,” the girl whispered to Gideon. “Dibs on him with french projects.”  
“No way!”  
“Now, let’s all get back to our books, shall we? Mister Holmes, can I speak to you after class? Now everyone, let’s turn to page thirty-two...”  
Sherlock turned his gaze out the window again. He’d lost count of the “can I see you after class” conversations he’d had. He refused to worry about it. He started to zone out. Then he heard it, somewhere in the back of the class, whispered just loudly enough for him to hear. The word that followed him around everywhere he went.   
“Freak.”   
Same old, same old. Nothing new under the sun. Not even the patterns of the fallen leaves in the courtyard outside the window.


End file.
